No such thing as Writer's Block

There is no such thing as Writer's Block. There is fatigue of course, but rest and, for me at least, birding are the remedies for that. (Illness is another matter.) Writer's Block is a poor excuse for failing to produce anything.

Research and note-making are one thing (two actually), but there is no better way to develop ideas than writing itself. Language is power and the key to unlocking the imagination, be it words, the vocabulary of paint or the syntax of film or whatever medium you choose to work in.

Time is the enemy, not Writer's Block. You can undam your imagination through practising your craft. Time, alas, cannot be defeated.

The New Year brings with it a lot of opportunities and a list of projects to work through. Having had a rest, on 2 January 2012 I expect to hit the keyboard hard.

My Kindle Runneth Over: Christmas is for reading, not for writing.

Trying to get back to working on the book this morning, I realise that Christmas is for reading, not for writing. The balance of pleasure has suddenly tilted; the weight of the New Year will bring it back into kilter. (Be aware of how the sub-conscious works - check your work for terrible puns!).

I have been overtaken by the momentum of Christmas ... and all that means in terms of the breaking of routines, going out and getting up later and later. Oh and alcohol, and if there was ever a destroyer of creativity it is that one.

The brain needs a break. I know where my book is going. I have a pile of project ideas to get stuck into. This is the season of relaxation and nurturing the digestion.

A decision.

I shall resume writing in the New Year... full of good intention and the self-discipline to make the book happen. Meanwhile, my Kindle runneth over.

The Smiling Email: Rejection doesn't have to mean dejection

Right on the button... Three months after submitting my synopsis and sample chapters, another rejection from a very nice agent. I expect a couple more of these in the run up to Christmas as agents try to clear their desks.

Disheartened? No.

The Key to Finlac will find a place eventually, in its current form or in an altered state.

My response? I replied to the agent warmly, thanking her for taking the time to have a look and indicated that I am half way through a new project, which I am. And I think it is going well.

Keep all avenues open. The Key to Finlac is the past and the future. Right now I am happy to live in the present.

A children’s book is the Christmas Tree in our literary calendar

A children’s book is the Christmas Tree in our literary calendar, shedding light into a dark world; it is a centrepiece for the imagination.

Call me old fashioned. A children’s book offers hope & represents the best of us. It is an entertainment and a celebration, a confection masking subtle instruction. It has a moral purpose. It makes us feel secure.

As with trees, accept no fakes. There should always be the smell of pine and loam, mingled with the faint scent of chocolate. Never become too old to lie down beneath its illuminated branches.

Forget your adult themes of gold & silver. Dress the tree in gaudy colours and hang it with accumulated stuff! Light it up whenever the day grows dark.

What Ahab and the Bittern did for me

What's the point of reading Moby Dick, then ending up like Ahab and the Whale?

The Bittern is no longer elusive. I videoed it yesterday and got it out of my system. It was sunny so I went birding and did no writing. No point in heaping pressure on myself.

No matter. It is raining this morning as a result of a deep Atlantic depression and and I wrote 1200 words in two and a half hours with a latte in between. I feel optimistic and back on track. Over the weekend I was able to make some major decisions about the plot of the book and darkened some characters in an unexpected way, which means I shall have to revisit and rewrite the first few chapters.

In the mean time, I shall keep going until I reach the end. Only then will I go back and sort out the beginning.

Shame Ahab never had that chance.

Deadlines or Dead Lines? - Working with the tyranny of time.

Back to full fitness today, touch wood, but I have lost two week's writing (about 8,000 words) and that raises the question of the deadline I set for finishing my current project: 30 January 2012. I had allowed for the Christmas break in between.

I am not up against the constraints of any publishing contract or Scrutiny Committee meeting, but the deadline is still important to me; the only way to get things done. Shall I work through Christmas to make up? No. Friends & family to see and films to watch.

Shall I up my word rate to 1,500 for sixteen consecutive days to meed the deadline? Beware the sound of exhausted prose.

1,200 words a day is a possibility, but in the end I shall have to be philosophical and pragmatic, as I am about videoing the elusive Bittern. I didn't see it at Slimbridge this morning. There will be another day, another bird, another book.

Right now I am thinking mid- February, which is ok as long as I produce 1000 words by end of Monday.

Juggling with a Book and a Bittern: Can a man multi-task?

Can a man multi-task? Can an author write two books simultaneously? Can this writer do anything while he has a hacking cough? It's been a week stuck indoors now.

To get back to work this morning, I've been laying out the structure of a story for 8-10 year olds - fifteen index cards. Gives me the impression I've done a morning's work. I shall write it soon... but at the same time as my current project? Time will tell.

Meanwhile, I have The Key to Finlac to sell... or revise again, the ebook of Badgerman & Bogwitch to finish and five other books I would like to write.

All that is required is a clear head, hard work and a steady hand... and of course a lot of luck.

Meanwhile, that Bittern has been showing all week at Slimbridge... I want to make a decent video of it and that is a frustration too!

Maybe I'll get there tomorrow.

When does restoration become a revision?

 Today, I've been working on the ebook edition of Badgerman & Bogwitch. It has been a slow process, I started work on it more than six months ago. Working without a deadline is never a good thing.

Before I could even think about revising the text, I had to restore it. I had typed the original in WordPerfect 5.1 in the early part of the last decade of the last century, white text on a lovely blank blue screen. (I favour a blue screen and have managed to recreate such a workplace in Scrivener for my current projects).

WordPerfect files presented me with a problem. I chose the cheap route and managed to import them into NeoOffice to convert them into Word.docs. Even then the formatting needed quite a lot of work before I could move them into Scrivener, which conveniently converts files into ebooks.

A while back, thinking I'd finished, I loaded the final MS onto my Kindle to preview it. The spacing between paragraphs was awry and the First Line Indents were nowhere to be seen. Today I have been back into the Scrivener files repeatedly pressing fn7 to add indents. The consolation being that I have managed to listen to much of the back catalogue of Kate Bush. (That's another story.) The paragraph spacing I shall sort out at another time.

Meanwhile, the ebook has allowed me to make revisions to the original text. Was I right or wrong?

Kuddling up with the Kindle: every picture tells a story

Fighting a hacking cough and a headache today - reading an ebook. Not cause and effect. The Devil's Star by Jo Nesbo, well-suited to it with its short chapters and episodic structure.

(Still managed to write 750 words of my own book in two sessions; read considerably more between sleeps.)

I have been reflecting on the comfort of the ereader. Stark, like borrowing a library book that has lost its cover? Fine once you get into the text; it is the story that counts. But with a dry cough and an aching head, it would have been nice to flex the spine of the book and gaze at the front cover and re-read the blurb.

Book covers are like the art cards you buy from galleries and take home to stick on the fridge beneath a magnet of the Eiffel Tower or a blue dog with wobbly eyes. A shelf of books is similar to the rack of cards in the museum shop - stimulating, offering choices and the possibility of adventure. Cover art offers a way into the world of the book and is a reminder of what it is about.

Books lined up on the shelf say something about you; what's in your Kindle is anybody's guess.

ebooks: Mars Mission or a Feeble Firework?

Dreaming about self-publishing ebooks? I already have that in mind for the updated version of Badgerman & Bogwitch. But what about launching the just completed, Key to Finlac into the unknown?

What does it take to become conventionally published?

There is a lot of luck involved. Once you have written a great and well-told story, you still need your book to land on the right desk at the right time and find the right gap in the list - as critical as a Mars landing. But there is little science to it - even less for the agentless author.

And as for self-publishing ebooks?

It's as exciting as Firework Night, but you are pointing your little rocket into the heavens. You are not even aiming at a planet. Be prepared. (I was a Boy Scout.) More than likely your dream is going to fall to earth unseen.

A Walk in the Woods: Writing is not a stroll in the park.

Stick at something and you will be rewarded.

I followed my protagonist into the woods this morning. She was looking for someone she has an ambivalent relationship with. I was getting to the point of writing a scene involving a confrontation and the development of an unlikely friendship thereafter.

Just as the two were to meet, someone else stepped out from behind a tree.

This is the moment writers work for - a lot of speculative, explorative text, hoping the plot will emerge - then  an unexpected and totally surprising entrance by someone unknown to the other characters and the author himself (in my case.) On this entrance the story turns.

So you go on. A moment like this will happen again - as long as you keep writing. It is the reward for keeping the faith...and sticking at it.

The Book and the Bittern: A Lesson for the Learning

http://www.youtube.com/my_videos?feature=mheeFour days away from the new book made for a tough start today. I thought I'd left a plot tag for myself to latch on to, but I hadn't. Flummoxed for a while, I engaged in pleasant displacement activity. I nearly packed up and went birding at WWT Slimbridge.

Nine o'clock came. I had not done much but stare out of the window at the birds busying themselves around the feeders. I tweeted about a Robin chasing a Hedge Sparrow (Dunnock), drawing a lesson from nature; not quite Aesop. A Blackcap appeared on the grape vine and the fig tree; I tweeted a comment about global warming.

I made coffee.

I wrote a paragraph. I built to 504 words. Took a break, went to Tesco. Came back, stuck at it and managed to crack the 1000 word barrier before lunch.

One of the tougher writing days, but rewarded by birds. And in the afternoon I saw the elusive Bittern. Never seen one before, and maybe never will again. Its only appearance today - for ten minutes in the middle of the reed bed, heavily camouflaged.

If I'd abandoned the book and gone birding this morning, I would have missed it.

Putting the Kindle to Work: No iStrain & no dropped pages

So how successful have I been proof reading my novel, The Key to Finlac, with the Kindle? In terms of time, 95,000 words took about ten hours.

And what did I discover? 158 typos or formatting errors that I'd missed on countless re-readings on my iMac screen.  No iStrain and no dropped pages.

The Kindle lists for you all the underlinings and notes I have made as an index, so when it comes to going back to the iMac it is easy to add the changes to my final draft without sorting through lots off MS pages.

I think the Kindle is well on the way to paying for itself already. Apart from that, I enjoyed reading my book; it still kept me gripped - and that is always a relief. I like it as it is; no major revisions.

The Proof is in the Kindle: why the e-reader is an essential tool for writers

Why is the Kindle 3G Keyboard so good for proof reading completed drafts? 

• Documents transfer easily as .pdf's, (or ebook .mobi files if you are using a program like Scrivener as your word processor.)

• The electronic paper eliminates the eyestrain associated with looking at an LCD/LED screen.

• Notes can be easily added to the text with the QWERTY keyboard so changes can be made to the MS once back at the computer.

• Your MS looks like a book as the reader will see it. (In my view, if you are self-publishing a Kindle is essential)

• It is portable.

• It saves paper.

• It is cheap and with the free 3G it is a bargain.

Writing in the Rain: Umbrella not Required

What happened to agents?

Well, I had one pro-forma rejection last week, so inconsequential that I didn't bother to write about it at the time. It took the form of sticky mailing label pressed down upon an apple green index filing card. With apologies from... the message was sympathetic... of the kind that says, I'm very sorry but diary commitments do not allow me to open your village fete... I hope the rain stays off and your afternoon is successful.

So why have I become immune to rejection? Simply that I am absorbed in writing my new book, the title of which shall remain a secret... in fact I don't have one yet. And after that book is done, I have two more projects in mind.

Meanwhile, my current manuscript, The Key to Finlac remains important to me. In fact I am re-reading it on my new Kindle - and enjoying it - a good sign. I am enthusiastic about it and will find a home for it.

Meanwhile, more writing is the thing.

11.11.11 : Dystopia & remembrance of things past

Today, a number. A truly digital date for a digital age. Or magical, depending on your sensibility. I am an optimistic person, a writer for children and YA (Young Adults). I am eleven again. Looking back, looking forward, I conclude that I am a green and pleasant land person by nature and nurture.

I don't believe in dystopia. Therefore I am disinclined to write about it, just for the thrill of it or because of a market trend in many forms of modern YA media. Today we remember the light, and make a note that darkness should be kept at bay.

Nor am I a utopian, though I have a preference for nature writing, meditative poetry and optimistic stories where troubled protagonists find redemption.

The truth of things, I think, occupies the ground somewhere in between and needs to be told in an honest tale.

Burning the Kindle at both ends

I have been talking about it for years. (Keep your friends close, keep your enemies even closer.) Though I don't really think of the Kindle, or any e-reader or tablet in that way. More like new neighbours that I'm nosey about. Or maybe they look interesting and I'd like to be friends.

Yesterday, my Kindle arrived.

What a tool for a writer! At last my MS in progress will be bearable to look at on a screen, and formatted just as the reader will see it. It will look like a book. I shall be able to carry it with me. I can download it to Kindle as a .pdf or even better use Scrivener to convert it into e-book format. The Kindle is a gateway. It is an essential tool.

I have also bought the Kindle, because it is there and I need to know, and because of all that free 19th century literature. Moby Dick, Walden, & Leaves of Grass were the first works I downloaded. The Scarlet Letter will be next. It's like being in the university bookshop again; the thrill of the bargain bin!

As a writer and a reader I shall burn the Kindle at both ends.

be-book-a-lula: when writing feels like Elvis

Some days the keyboard plays rock 'n' roll. Don't ask me why. It just sings to a different beat.

On a good day I write 500 words an hour. But not all day - otherwise I'd be writing a novel a month. My quota is a thousand words or a little over, then I stop with a drum roll on the desk and and a crash of cymbals in my head. On a good day I've finished work by 10.30. a.m. having had a coffee break halfway through.

On a bad day, it's like a the guitar player hasn't turned up. 750 words after four hours; the thunder of drums in my head.

I write chapters 2,500 words long. Short and crisp like the two minute single. Memorable. A juke box-full that might become an album... eventually... hopefully.

And when that happens I feel like Elvis.

bursting the ebabble bubble

Is mixing tweets a bad thing- I tweet both birds & books? My audience is different for each, if I have an audience. Pick 'n' Mix is an enjoyable thing, but look what happened to Woolworths. Do I need twin Twitter accounts, like I need three bank accounts and four camcorders?

Email, ebook, ebabble, ebabel, e-enabled, press esc(ape).

Stop.

I have joined the blogging debate. (At least momentarily - because we only have a moment whilst doing other more important things.) Deploy a restful screensaver and some ambient music.

Think.

In the writing game there is pressure to Blog, Tweet, be Linkedin, interview oneself on YouTube (I have a birding channel - surprise), be the face of a book.

There are so many words out there: voices to be heard, like everyone singing a different song on the tube all at the same time.



You might also like to read the excellent blog by Sarah Duncan: Platforms are for Trains not Writers.

Sugar Lumps of Encouragement - Honesty is a Hard Pill to Swallow.

Another day, another nice contact from an agent. She sounds charming and is very kind. Neighbourly even. Concerned. The email arrived like a handwritten note put through the door. There she goes down the front path. A cheery wave goodbye from an unobtrusive distance. Going shopping. Actually that's her job.

As emails arrive in my mail box, they seem increasingly like get-well cards. Glad you are making progress. Hope you'll be out and about soon. I think there's some hope for you yet. Keep taking the medicine. You could always try another practitioner....

I cast no blame. In a former professional life I have composed notes like this myself.

Like get-well cards, messages from agents, don't really get to the root of the problem, they skirt around the embarrassing or difficult issues. They cheer you up for an hour or two; they don't do much to make you well.

At the end of the day, getting better or managing the condition comes from within oneself. The only medicine that really works is a regular dose of writing.

And so of course that is exactly what I go on doing.

Poetical and Charming - Writing for a Less Lyrical Age

A licked finger pointing at the sky; a cool breeze tempting a cloud into an Indian Summer. To go indoors or stay outside a little longer and catch a cold? A Puzzle.

I have always thought that age, like the wind, is a continuum, with ebbs and flows, that eventually peters out. The reality of publishing is that age comes in marketable chunks, like the National Curriculum, and there are little gaps in between, or at least murky grey areas of fog where books might become lost.

It is lovely to be associated with lyricism & charm. And the poetical.  (The words of a well-known publisher about my book.) But it would be nice to be lashed to the rough mast of teenage fiction or dream in the lazy hammock of the 10-12's. At the moment I am at the end of the plank... staring into the fog.

Or maybe not.

The story is the thing and it should be able to slide up and down a continuum of age, if it is good enough. Having just been rejected with charm and grace by that well-known publisher I talked about earlier, I need to reflect on whether my story is bright enough to illuminate the dark gaps that lie between twelve and thirteen, and penetrate the fog that is fifteen.

A puzzle.

In a queue, not even on hold.

It's something of an Indian Summer on the writing front. Words have drifted in on a warm breeze the last couple of days. Easy living. Optimism. Not about publishers and agents, but about writing again.

I am enjoying these days of hearing nothing from agents and publishers. I should be more anxious. I would be if it wasn't for the writing of a new book.

The Key to Finlac sits beside me in the shade. The earth will move around the sun. Agents will be agents. No news is simply no news. It means I am in a queue, not even on hold.

My Indian Summer may last a few weeks more and maybe the new book will be so advanced it will keep me warm throughout the long cold winter.

Nutrition for Novelists: The Importance of Leftovers

What do you do when you've been away for a long weekend? The house is freezing, no food in the fridge. Buy a takeaway or grab something quick; gradually get going again. Easy solutions off the shelf.

A book can also grow cold after three days of neglect. How to get started again? Could be a nerve wracking Monday morning ahead.  Maybe go out for an early morning of birding - put writing off until the afternoon? Have another day off; leave the book until Tuesday?

No such thing! Take a tip from your mother. Remember your childhood. Leftovers are the thing for a Monday. Heat them up or eat them cold. Same with writing a book. Never consume your thoughts all at once - leave a little on the side for later.

Easy then to pick up where you left off; add something a little tasty to make it fresh.

What's good enough for a Coal Tit is good enough for me.

All's well in the garden. A Robin has set up a winter territory and a Coal Tit has taken up residence. There was a Wren in the bird bath this morning; House Sparrows shuttle back and forth in the hedge. The feeders are busy. Seems like the habitat is right - maybe it is going to be a long cold winter.

I am into a rhythm of writing too. I have a habitat that suits, made up mainly of bits of Beethoven and Chopin... and Debussy too. I play the same pieces every day as I begin to work. I have a playlist in iTunes called Writing - all lyrical pieces (tho' lyrics are banned until the writing is done).

The music has a purpose: it cuts out background noise. But more important, it provides continuity, linking sessions at the keyboard that might otherwise become disjointed. It is a signal to begin work - without all the downsides of a factory hooter.

Do I ever change the music? No. Because day after day it seems to work.

Jackdaw Dawns - Still Chattering to Myself

Writing before dawn is a good way to start the day, and it's something I can only do in Autumn and Winter. There is little possibility of working this way in the Spring & Summer, because the birds are up long before me, and then they beckon me outside.

Today I started with Jackdaws streaming from their roost against a charcoal sky. And from there the words flew. Easy writing - dialogue. It can delude you into thinking you are writing well, just because it comes in great quantities. Loose words have a price.

That cost can be the stagnation of the story and of course lengthy revision. Writing dialogue, like good conversation brings with it a feeling of well-being. But dialogue an be tricky like a chatter on the phone. It can lay a false trail. It can be broken and incomplete.

Dialogue can strike a wrong note if it is divorced from the body language of the story.

Bubblegum is the Muzak of My Elevator Pitch

I never liked Bubblegum music. Sugar, Sugar! So why was it in my head last night, zinging around behind my eyes - odd harmonies, a medley of sixties radio plays? Like winding down a car window on a different time.

A 17.21 email from the well-known publisher!

Oh Honey, Honey! Hoping has become hopping up and down. Having another p is so important...particularly at my age. (I have turned into Adrian Mole).

My letter was mislaid - in fact I had addressed it to the wrong person (2012 Writers' & Artists' Year Book already out of date - kind ageing friend.)

A letter lost is more potent when it becomes a letter found. The Key to Finlac will at least be looked at and I have come over all adolescent exclamation marks!

Bubblegum loses its flavour, but I shall keep it on the bed post over night. Or even for a week or two.

Too old to be feeling like Adrian Mole

Four hours working on the new book this morning. Not all writing. Quite a lot of fiddling and mapping, sketching out characters, plot and sub-plot; all a bit hazy. A school yard imagined - scenes taken from then and now. New people. A slightly different way of working for me and in between time delving into Scrivener for target word-count features; things I pretend will make me write to a deadline.

And then this afternoon, I turn my attentions towards agents. A new honed-down synopsis. One side of A4. A simpler autobiography. An email of introduction. (I love me, I love me not).

Three times I revise the package; three times I send it off. It's going so well, I send a fourth. Never get carried away by the moment!

The fourth email with attachments (Version Two) wings its way to a charming, unsuspecting person I have sent version one to four weeks before!  I end up flustered (like the numbers in the previous sentence) and send an apology hard on the heels of my first email. "Just ignore me!" it says. Red faced. Hot under the collar.

Why do I feel like Adrian Mole trying to seduce Pandora?

Life in a Heart-Stopping Moment

A loud ping just a moment ago and an echo of the Thank You Experiment. Even though it is not much, it is heartening.

Seven weeks ago I emailed my attachments to a well-known Literary Agency and just now my post was acknowledged. Albeit a pro-forma text, it was from an email address that included a person's name. Bless her.

Same story. Hundreds of submissions; very few taken on each year. Up to three months to say no or begin to take things further. (Or is that three months from now?)

I have warmed to Literary Agents. I would rather sit at my desk than theirs. They must dread the ping - such a complex sound.

At Home with the W's

My untried agents list is complete. As many as letters in the alphabet. All warranting an email or an envelope.

I have reached down into the W's. Or up depending on which way you want to look at it, particularly if you are standing on your head or looking back through your legs, being confused by M's and more M's.

W authors are often hard to find on the bookshelves, but they are always worth a look - Walt Whitman for example, a fine double doubleyou, which ever way you look at him. Leaves of Grass is a volume I shall never throw away.

Nor shall I discard Walden by Henry David Thoreau, a reminder that the best books are timeless. They stick in you mind even though lesser books take pride of place on the bookshop shelves.

W is a good place to be. Look back; reflect and enjoy. The exotic world of x, y & z is not far ahead.

A Tall Person Blind to the Obvious

Being a tall person, I sometimes don't see what is at my feet. In fact I often don't look. I'm too busy staring at the horizon, wondering what might be on the other side. And being a birder, I spend much of my time looking up into the sky - blue or otherwise. Sometimes I fall over.

The Writers' and Artists' Yearbook, with its gleaming traffic-light red cover has been my guide in recent months. Useful, but wearying at times like a back seat driver, and for my purposes somehow incomplete. It is easy to transfer blame to a friend for the rejection one sometimes feels.

But there is another volume I have overlooked, even though it is in its eighth edition. The Children's Writers' and Artists' Yearbook. It is brim full of useful addresses and advice I am not too proud to receive. I have been away too long. The cover is an encouraging green.

Writing Not Decorating

Back to writing today. Oddly for me in the afternoon. Only 59,495 words to go before revision. I forced myself to sit down. I was going to write a synopsis. I abandoned that idea after three words. Then I thought I'd do some character sketches. I gave up on that idea too.

So I did what I always do. I started writing. My character found a name. Now she has to find other characters to meet - I now have four - and a story to tell. That story has begun. A fifth character waits somewhere at the end of the garden, maybe. This is the how I work. The only way I can invent is to write, then sort it all out afterwards. Risky? It's the only method I know.

I enjoyed it (just as well) trying to scare myself with the story rather than the daunting nature of the task. My character is off and walking about, already troubled, feeling a little alienated, claustrophobic and perplexed. Female this time - a new departure.

The girl is temporarily or permanently called Lorraine (for reasons unknown). A wide world is ahead of her. And that's the whole point about children's fiction.

Indecision is the Mother of Invention

Two weeks ago I wrote in this blog: "Across the fields, I can hear a voice tempting me down another fantastical road." Well, that voice has been nagging at me ever since and I've followed the cake crumb trail back to where I started.

This morning I began to outline the direction of the more outlandish of the two children's books I have had in mind. A third prospect still looms at the crossroads, but I don't think I'll go there for a while, though I always have a sense of that path in the back of my mind.

I've been doing a lot of fidgeting in my chair today, but I have at least sat here for two hours, staring beyond the screen. I shall sit here for two hours tomorrow and the day after... and so on until it is done. I have made some notes, if not written the first sentence. I know where I shall begin.

As for the other book, who knows? Indecision is sometimes the mother of invention.

You Can't Get Down Until You've Eaten Your Greens!

Tie me with a silk scarf to my Herman Miller chair. A great chair (acquired for about forty quid) doesn't guarantee a great book, but unless you sit in it, nothing is ever going to be written. It has been a restless week full of distractions, mostly happy.

Not good enough. And nothing to do with hearing from agents and that well-known publisher I approached four weeks ago with a tentative enquiry and an SAE. Zilch on all counts. Nil points; no response. More pings and the clattering of the letter box next week, hopefully.

There's a lot of greens involved in writing a book. Sometimes they taste sweet and tender; sometimes it's a tough and tasteless chew, full of stringy bits. It can be all toothpicks and embarrassing shreds caught in your teeth.

But you have to sit there till it's done. There's no pudding until you've eaten your greens.

Up There With Elvis

How many million words have been written about Steve Jobs today? Here are a few more. Not really about him, more about what he has done for me. He hasn't made me more creative, but he has created a better space for me to work.

I love all the gadgets - I have two iPods and a MacBook. A small collection. But what I love most is the iMac sitting on my desk. I have had it for four years. It has never gone wrong. It is the only place I am really tidy; it seems to reorder itself every time I mess with it.

What I like about the iMac most is that I can barely see it. It doesn't get in the way. It is almost invisible. That is the magic of Steve Jobs.

Waving Not Drowning

Tidying things up today after a weekend away. Five more packages in the post, four publishers and one agent. Looking at my list, I see that I have three or four tentative enquiries still to make. This stage of the adventure is nearly over.

When I had finished my first manuscript, which became Inside the Glasshouse, I approached thirteen publishers directly and received twelve rejections. It was my long-shot and the last publisher I approached, Faber & Faber, that pulled me from the slushpile.

To say that it was Faber & Faber is probably misleading. It was one person, Christopher Reid, who saw a spark in my MSS. Had the MSS landed on another desk things might have been very different and my book sunk without trace. So much is down to chance. I'm sure many better books go a begging.

But I don't think it is really any harder now than it was twenty years ago. The adventure goes on. There are new landscapes to explore.

Words are a gift and a price says nothing about their value.

When was the last time you had a second delivery?

Six down, three to go in the agent hunt. Another pro-forma rejection today from a large agency, but it was worded nicely and someone had taken the trouble to write my first name after Dear and a real person had signed it. These are nice touches.

What have I learned from today's post? It is clear that the type of material I submitted was not suited to this particular agent's list - I probably misinterpreted their entry in the Writers' and Artists' Year Book. Secondly, what I suspected. They receive up to 300 manuscripts per week.

Unusually, there was a second post today. My replacement black ink cartridge has arrived. I shall use it to print off six sets of submissions to send to the only six publishers I can find who will accept unsolicited MSS.

That leaves me with a total of nine chances. My spirits remain high! (Sounds like someone on a desert island writing a message in the sand.) I have plenty of food and water.

Sunshine is the Currency of Memory

It's here. What really matters. Ten minutes ago, sitting in the dappled shade by the pond, looking at the sunlight, I found it.

Sunshine is the currency of memory. It enables you to trade with the past and put something away for the future. Children's fiction mostly comes from the memory of sunlight and cool earthy places. If the story begins in the dark, it always looks for the light.

For me, it was the heat of today that has brought me to this place. There is something rustling in the hedge on the other side of nettle patch.

I have picked up a stick. I have written my first sentence. The sentence that changes everything.

Some Pings I Can Do Without - What an email Address Tells Us

The Ping came while I was eating lunch - I missed it. And therefore the sense of expectation that comes with one of the few noises that drowns out the sound of the keys. (I punch them very hard as if I am still using a typewriter.) The excitement of the Ping is is usually dampened by news from John Lewis or Amazon.

I am glad I was away from the computer for this particular ping. The proforma rejection (it is now 3:2 ) was sent by an intern at the agency, if the email address is to be interpreted correctly. I have nothing against interns; they are trying to learn their trade, unpaid like many others. I  hope they get to read some books and not just press the pro-forma reject button and operate the shredder. I'm sure their Kindles or iPhones are full of entertaining .pdf's.

What am I trying to say? pa@ is better than admin@ is better than intern@. NAME@ is best of all! There is something to be said for an eye-catching title.

The Kindness of Strangers

I turned left at 10.00 a.m. yesterday. It took me two hours to make a choice.

I'm a few paces down the road, looking over my shoulder, wondering whether I left the gas on, thinking I should have turned the water off at the mains. I can still see the crossroads. There's no devil there to parley with. I am on my own.

I chose the course of realism, then camped out overnight within sight of all things that are familiar. Not too late to turn back. But I have notes and some notion of what I might find in the dusty streets that lie some miles ahead. There are strangers I need to get to know in the quiet outskirts of town.

Across the fields, I can hear a voice tempting me down another fantastical road.

Roads Not Taken

Back at the crossroads. 7.50 a.m. Monday morning. Four roads to go down and no chance of a popular vote to nudge me one direction or another.

I could backtrack today and revisit my agent list and maybe revise my synopsis, or even God forbid mess around with the structure of The Key to Finlac.

And what of the other roads? To the left and the right I am faced with beginning two novels for young people. One is set in the past in the real world, the other is fantastical. This is my dilemma. It reflects my writing history. Inside the Glasshouse and Roosters v Badgerman & Bogwitch and The Key to Finlac.

How is a reader going to characterise me: realist or fantasist? Does it matter? Aren't I just a story-teller, capable of drawing people in regardless of their preferences. Not sure it works like that.

Readers might prefer a series with recurring characters; there is comfort and safety in that. I am interested in the story a character has to tell, but they tend to tell me only one. Then I leave them and listen to another. I am curious as to what happens to them next, but it is never as interesting as what has happened to them before. Anyway, the reader can carry on the story into the future should they so wish.

And the bumpy road, that lies straight ahead with its diversion signs and contraflows.... roadworks in progress? An adult thriller.

This morning I must choose which road to go down.

iPhone Therefore I Am

Holiday reading? Take a pile of books, or take a Kindle. In the case of travelling light take an iPod Touch or an iPhone or another smartphone. I wear glasses for reading; it helps.

While I was away, I read The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo on my iPod: the screen is 3"x2". The Redbreast is a full-length novel. A page scroller. A thoughtful thriller. It does have short chapters. It is written in the Hemingway style. Filmic. Possibly the ideal ebook. It may be the future. The seemingly impossible is possible.

Perhaps, I have a short attention span? I'm not sure I would read Moby Dick on an iPhone. I would certainly read it on a Kindle. If I'd had a smartphone as as student, I would probably have spent even longer in coffee bars and cafeterias.

I also had the full manuscript of The Key to Finlac formatted as a Kindle ebook on my iPod. I couldn't revise it, but I could read it and it looked ok.

The children's ebook market is young, but it won't take long to mature... as long as children keep reading. The smartphone is the portable Penguin/Puffin of the ebook world.

 I am not attached to paper. I am glued to the story.

Blanc to Blank and Back Again

Just back in from France. My mind is a complete blank, which, surprisingly, for a writer is a good thing. The bad thing would be not to get back into the writing habit as soon as possible and begin to fill that blank space with some new words.

 I didn't think about writing while I was away, though I did cast an occasional thought in the direction of Literary Agents. As far as that goes, it's two-all at the moment. Not two for my work and two rejections. It is as you might expect, four rejections in total. When I say the score stands at 2:2, I mean two pro-forma rejections slips versus two personal and kind letters.

Does this give me hope? Sort of. Does this make me doubt my writing ability. No. I can turn a word into a phrase, into a sentence, into a paragraph, into a chapter. I know my characters are good and have something to reveal. Does it make me question my story-telling? That's another tale, the end to which has yet to be written.

What the experience does do is make me value more than ever the work of my previous editors at Faber: Christopher Reid and Louisa Sladen. They gave me plenty of their time and taught me well.

I hope I listened enough. (They'd probably have cut ten words out of the previous paragraph.)

Something for the Weekend

A subtle, but happy ping this lunchtime. Not only do agents work on Sundays, but Friday lunchtimes too. It is not quite the Big Bang of my literary universe, but there is a glimmer of light in the void. I am warming to Agents.

A signed rejection letter yesterday ( I am actually not being facetious) and today an invitation to submit my synopsis and first three chapters. It is not exactly a first date, but at least it's an invitation to the High School Prom.

Curiously, I use metaphors in this blog - and maybe mix them up a little too. I seemed to have dropped my stella theme in the previous paragraph. (A lesson in how not to write, perhaps.) I try to expunge all metaphors and similes from my prose; something I learned early on. I guess in this case metaphors are a symptom of happiness, so I am content to live with them for a while.

What have I learned on this adventure so far? Literary agents are just normal busy people and they do reply when they have time. Patience.

P.S. This is my last post for a short while. Blogging in the next few days days will be dependent on the availability of Wi Fi.

Please Mr Postman...

Ah, a pleasant letter today from someone who would be good to work with.

However, it is not to be. Rejection again, but with kind words. That is always a good thing. Like being picked up by the person who has knocked you over. Better than being left floundering in the street. My pride is intact...and I have not been robbed.

The nice person who wrote this knows who she is, and I thank her for her consideration:

"Thank you for giving me a chance to look at the opening chapters of the Key to Finlac. You write well and with great fluency, but I'm afraid I wasn't completely won over by the story you were telling. I am sorry: my opinion is necessarily entirely subjective and another agent will certainly respond positively to your storytelling. I wish you every good luck with your project."

So, I carry on. I shall begin writing a new book at the end of September.

In the Writing Room

There's little point hanging around until the Christmas lights are switched on. I've upped the energy and sent off material to four more agents today and enquiries to two others. I have come across another agent who won't even consider looking at anything until January (that makes two) and another three who won't consider anything at all. That leaves me with only three or four more lines of enquiry to pursue!

The good news? I had an automated out of office reply from an agent who will be back on Monday. Communication at last. What good timing on my part, though. She'll have a week's worth of emails to plough through on her return.

The bad news? I did that stupid thing of sending off an email to an agent without the attachments; I re-sent it, hoping they wouldn't notice or they'd think me eccentric. Trouble is there seems to be no margin for error in this business. And there is no point in sending witty Oops, I'm an idiot but creative really messages.

And the brave thing? I have contacted a well-known publisher directly by letter. I addressed the envelope in my best handwriting, like a school boy writing to the President of the United States. I enclosed an SAE.

By way of displacement activity, I have added another page to my website www.gilesdiggle.com. The page is called The Writing Room. Could be worth a visit.

Maybe I should have called it The Waiting Room?

Rejection Letter - What does it look like?

This is yesterday's rejection email. It is the standard response. Busy people. Polite. I have no complaints. It is the business. Dust myself down and carry on. It is a grazed knee only.


"Thank you for your submission, which we have read with interest. Unfortunately we did not feel enthusiastic enough about it to offer to take it further.

We are sorry to give you a disappointing response, but thank you for thinking of us in connection with your work. We regret the necessity of a form email but we are unable to respond personally because of the large volume of unsolicited material we receive.

Children's Submissions"

Rejection Letters: When a Ping Becomes a Pong.

Be careful what you wish for! As soon as I changed my email alert from a pong to a ping and moaned about the lack of even an automated response (check out No Ping No Post & The Thank You Experiment) I received a very polite but automated rejection from a well known Literary Agent. And on a Sunday too - they obviously work weekends. Or the mail server does. Impressive.

How did that make me feel? For starters, like an eighteen year old getting their first rejection from university.  I soon got over that. Then it was the sting and giddiness of an unexpected punch in face coming from the left. A quick shake of the head cleared that. Then of course it is anger and bitterness and a how could they? This soon passed. Rational again. Clarity.

Of course, a response after three weeks was pretty much what I was hoping for and the message was pretty much as I expected. Anyway I had another date in my diary to look forward to.

Three weeks ago I checked out an agent's website for their submissions guidelines and discovered they could not possibly take any proposals until 5 September. (Today!) So I paid the site a visit at 8.00 a.m., only to find that they can't possibly take anything until 12 January 2012!

This is how difficult the children's fiction market is. Strangely, their message gives me hope!

The Thank You Experiment

How long does it take to answer an email? How long is a piece of string? (In the case of string, a quick tug will tell you something about it, whether there is something tied to the end. There will always be time to measure it and make a proper assessment later.)

So how long does it take to acknowledge an email? According to the Thank You Experiment it takes precisely 7.5 seconds. That is how long it takes to click on the message, type two words and press Send. Should you put the findings of the experiment into practice, you will discover that you can answer 40 emails in five minutes - while the kettle boils. Easy. Polite even.

Why then doesn't a literary agent send out a simple acknowledgement of short email proposals? Or at least set up an automated reply on a submissions email account?

Perhaps, I am being unfair.


The Thank You Experiment:

• Open your email.


• Compose short message.


• Email it to yourself.


• See how many times you can click on the message, type Thank you, & press Send in the space of a minute.

If my observations or calculations are wrong, please let me know. Send me your results.

The Art of Lying Down

How long does it take to Tweet? How long does it take to Blog three short paragraphs? More to the point how long does it take a children's fiction author to install a Follow me on Twitter button on his website?

The answer is one sleep and a lie down. The sleep was last night. I woke up still confused. It was the cloud-watching that did it for me five minutes ago. The sun was shining, the clouds were as in childhood, the sky was blue. The answer came to me. Now the problem is solved; the button is installed. So the software is intuitive after all. Except that if you asked me now to install a Follow Me button, I probably wouldn't remember how to do it.

Lying down has always worked for me; it is one of the arts of the children's fiction writer.

No Ping No Post

Still no ping from the email, or strictly speaking in the case of my New Message alert: still no sound like something dropping into a blocked toilet.

It is nearly three weeks since I emailed a couple of agents and posted off my synopsis and three chapters to two more. Half their allotted time is now over (six to eight weeks for a reply). But there's no point in rattling their chains.

Time passes.

The garden centres will be full of Christmas decorations next week and the supermarkets will be thinking about Easter Eggs.

Time to hedge my bets.

On Monday I shall send out four more proposals. Right now I shall change that embarrassing plop to an expectant ping!

Meanwhile, if anyone could tell me where you can get that happy You've got mail! alert I would be pleased to hear from them.

Hep! L has broken loose: The Curse of the Typo

Typos are like flies on the windscreen. They appear as soon as you've finished a clean. And they do matter. I wish I could find an effective typo eradicator. When my first book, Inside the Glasshouse was published, I was sent six author's complementary copies by Faber. The first page I opened contained a typo, despite twelves months of editing and proof reading.

Typos matter because they distract the reader and that's what they remember for the next few pages. They matter, because they're embarrassing, like not being able to spell embarrassing, or environment (This was the first word I ever chalked on a blackboard in my first teaching practice - and I left the n out! - and I was being observed.)

And typos are so important in uploading your web page to Go Daddy. Yesterday, I missed a forward slash from a dialogue box and my web page wouldn't appear. Three hours later having poured over Google pages, I discovered my error.

Curse the typo! Sigh of relief at last! Please visit www.gilesdiggle.com and report  any typos to me.

From Tags to Twitches

Ever been glue-eyed in Google? My eyelids are twitching. I have been stuck with meta tags for most of the morning. Like the burrs that attach themselves to you when you strike off into the long grass, I hope my tags will stick in the search engines. Google, hallowed be thy name.

I've been trying to optimise this blog with meta tags so the web crawlers can find it; friends and relations can only take so much - but thank you anyway.

Tomorrow my website should go live, hosted by Godaddy, which seems apt as my parents bought me my first typewriter, an Olivetti Lettera 32, forty years ago. (In which move did I lose it?)

I learned to touch-type on the Olivetti - sort of - with five fingers from a little yellow and black Pitman's teach yourself manual. If only Google had such a thing!

As for the website, www.gilesdiggle.com, I've had to meta tag that too. It's been uploaded. Now, I am keeping my fingers crossed that it will appear.



For mega tag advice: www.bloggertricks.com

Why do authors need a sun tan?

When do you become an author and when do you stop being an author? Not having published a book since the early '90's - before the turn of the century - I sometimes feel like an ex-author, a bit like Monty Python's ex-parrot. I am certainly a writer; this blog proves that and I managed 95,000 words last year (The Key to Finlac). But am I still an author?

Does it matter how I feel about it or what I call myself or how other people regard me? Fifteen months ago, I was a Local Government Officer, a Senior Adviser. Now I am an ex-LGO, no doubt about it. In 2010 I had a job description and most of the time I managed to follow it. Then they gave me an acronym, VER (maybe you should Google it?) That sort of defines me too.

So why does this 'author' thing matter? Well, it's a question of confidence and self-belief - a bit like standing up in your Speedos on a Mediterranean beach (not that I've ever done that kind of thing). Returning to authoring is like baring your chest when everyone else already has a tan.

The Goodbye Book Hello-Goodbye Agents Blues

What do you do when you've finished your book? How do you know you've actually finished it? After 19 years I finished The Key to Finlac. In the last year I produced four drafts. I spent two weeks proof-reading. I'm sure there are still one or two typos. I just had to let it go.

I was first published through the Faber "slushpile." That shows you need luck as well as talent. And past good fortune and previous performance does not guarantee future success, which means I have to measure success as enjoyment of the creative process. Write because I like to and because I must.

I let The Key to Finlac loose two weeks ago. This time around, I am looking for a literary agent to represent me and the book. I sent a synopsis and the first three chapters off to four establishments. I like my book. I live in hope, but I won't lie to myself. These are tough times in publishing; I think it always has been so. Agents receive hundreds of manuscripts a year. The J K Rowlings are few and far between, and even they get rejected.

In the meantime, each ping of the email makes me jump!

Where did I go?

What do you do when you have been remaindered? Deleted. You keep on writing. In the meantime, you reassess your place in the material world.

I went back to a part-time day job. Then as the characters in my fourth book lost their way, I made the day job full-time. My characters needed a break too. They had to find their story. As the day job grew into a profession, the time for writing became less and my other interests took over. My characters wandered off into the distance and were lost from sight.

Nineteen years later, they reappeared with new tales to tell. Experience had made them more rounded and with them they brought the prospect of a new adventure. They were able to show me where they were going. All I had to do was follow and record what happened to them on their journey with the Key to Finlac.

Writing is like that. If you don't shadow your characters everyday, you lose sight of them and the chance to tell their story. Then again, sometimes they just need to wander off. Next time it happens I trust it won't be for nineteen years.

Try to keep your characters close; never let their trail go cold.

Where am I?

What happens when you have published three novels for teenagers with Faber and Faber? You get very excited for a while and then try to write a fourth. And while you are attempting the fourth, you try some other projects - writing for a younger age group for example - unsuccessfully in that your publisher doesn't want them. Then your editor leaves the company and you feel abandoned.

But there is hope. Your editor has joined another company and calls you about writing something for emerging readers. You give it a go, but it doesn't work out. Woe and double abandonment.

Meanwhile, you carry on with the fourth novel and a year has gone by. Then the news comes that Faber are deleting your books from their list. Suddenly you are out of print. That was 1995.

Two weeks ago, 19 years late, I finished that fourth book - I am quite pleased with it. It is called the Key to Finlac. You are the first to hear the title. This blog will record my journey on the road to being published again...and all the joys and tribulations that go along with writing.

This is my story and the next chapters are entirely in my hands. The future is on the tip of my tongue.